Michael Schuman

Michael Schuman writes about Asia and global economic issues as a correspondent for TIME in Beijing, China. In his 16 years as a journalist in Asia, he has reported from a dozen countries, including China, India, Japan and Indonesia. Assignments have taken him into Gobi Desert sandstorms, Malaysian mosques, Indian call centers and Chinese shirt factories and to a North Korean state dinner (complete with Kim Jong Il himself). Schuman is the author of The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia's Quest for Wealth. Before joining TIME in 2002, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and a staff writer for Forbes. Originally from New Jersey, he has a B.A. in Asian history and political science from the University of Pennsylvania and a master of international affairs from Columbia.

Articles from Contributor

This is the first in a series of posts posing different ideas on how Europe can get itself out of its current mess. I figure Europe has so many problems that we can’t possibly address them all in one post. Yes, Greece finally got its bailout, and a big one — $146 billion from the Eurozone and International Monetary Fund – but the …

As China marches on to global greatness, one of its major deficiencies is in corporate management. It’s not that Chinese executives aren’t smart or hardworking, but the fact is they have little experience managing operations outside of China. Many Chinese outfits talk about becoming global players, but making those dreams reality …

So now Europe may have a real crisis on its hands. It’s been clear to financial markets for months that the debt woes in Greece could spread to the Eurozone’s other financially unsound PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Spain). But the Eurozone’s leadership didn’t bother to take heed. Instead of dealing with the zone’s …

We’re all by now well aware of the dangers of global imbalances, those massive surpluses and deficits – most notably in China and the U.S. — that underpinned the Great Recession. Economists agree that the world economy will not return to a stable, healthy growth path until those giant imbalances are reduced. That means Americans …

There’s a growing consensus among economists that the global economic recovery is looking better and better. Those fears of a “double-dip” recession, in which the world takes a second tumble into a downturn, are fading. Barclays Capital recently upgraded its 2010 GDP growth forecast for the U.S. to 3.8% from 3.5%, and had this to …

Whenever the BRICs have a powwow, as they did during their second summit this week in Brasilia, I can’t help thinking about the future of the global economy. After all, the BRICs – that’s Goldman Sachs-speak for the four great emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China – in many ways represent that future. There’s …

China’s gross domestic product grew a spectacular 11.9% in the first quarter of 2010, compared to the same period a year before. Qu Hongbin, an economist with HSBC, figures that China’s GDP is expanding at an annualized rate of nearly 11%.

The ongoing fiscal meltdown in Greece has become something like watching a really bad action flick. The required damsel-in-distress (in this case named Greece), yelping and screaming from scene to scene, barely survives repetitive attempts to do her in by assorted bad guys (in this case called speculators), until some hunk with a lot of …

China posted a trade deficit – no, that’s not a typo, I did mean deficit – in March, of $7.2 billion. That’s the first monthly deficit since 2004. It couldn’t come at a more auspicious time, for China that is. Beijing is in the middle of a tug-of-war with Washington over the value of its currency, and the deficit takes a bit of …

Everyone’s gotten themselves all hot and bothered at the prospect that China’s leadership may actually loosen up policy on their currency, the yuan, and allow it to appreciate against the U.S. dollar. Optimism was sparked by U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s unexpected pit stop in Beijing for a meeting with China’s vice …

I had the honor last week to interview Japan’s new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, in Tokyo. My full story on Hatoyama appears in the April 19th magazine, and you can also read the full text here. But I thought I’d add some more details from the interview on Curious Capitalist.